Sunday 17 February 2019

Sdrawkcab!



No, it's ok, I haven't had a stroke. This month I thought I'd share a handy little tip which is brilliantly simple for getting you out of a rut, particularly if you're hitting that plateau (which we all hit at some point or another) where you just find yourself playing the same thing every time you solo.

Let's say you're primarily a blues rock pentatonic based player. Alot of people's first instinct is to go and learn some exotic sounding scales, and while this is never exactly bad for you, the simple fact is there really isn't much call for the Phrygian Dominant over the rock & roll 12 bars most of us bang out at the local open mic night. So while learning exotic scales can be fun, it can also be very tricky to integrate them into your “everyday” pentatonic playing (I'll be doing some more posts on this over the next few months, so stay tuned).

Maybe some new techniques? Tapping is often something that I get asked about, and again, it's a fun, cool-sounding technique, looks flash, but the same problem applies – just how are you going to take that jaw droppng tapped septuplet Steve Vai lick you've been working on for the last two months and apply it to “Route 66”? Again, I'll come back to ways to integrate different techniques too over the next few months, but the simple fact is it's going to sound weird in that context. Like taking a cheese sandwich and adding blackcurrent jam – neither is bad in it's own right, but they don't exactly gel together.

So it can be diffiicult to know where to go to get off this plateau. Typically though, as musicians we strive for the most difficult, demanding solution to a problem and completely ignore the one that has been right under our noses the whole time.

Retrograde.

From Wikipedia:

A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans ("walking backward", medieval Latin, from cancer, crab). An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse. An even more exact retrograde reverses the physical contour of the notes themselves, though this is possible only in electronic music. Some composers choose to subject just the pitches of a musical line to retrograde, or just the rhythms. In twelve-tone music, reversal of the pitch classesalone—regardless of the melodic contour created by their registral placementis regarded as a retrograde.

So basically, taking something you already know and playing it backwards (yeah, title making more sense now?)

This has been used as a compositional aid for composers working in classical music for centuries, and will have been used many times by songwriters in the pop/rock field, but somehow we never seem to use it when improvising. Here's an example – a stock E minor pentatonic blues/ rock lick we've all used a billion times:



We all know that, we all know how to make it fit – so what happens when we flip it around?



Ooh.

Now try practicing it in context – 2 bars on/ 2 bars off is perfect for this.

NB - for those unfamiliar with this exercise, it's incredibly useful and because I nicked the idea from a drum teacher friend of mine, incredibly simple too:

1 – tap foot to beat, using metronome or drum machine if available

2 – play 2 bars of appropriate chord backing – so for this lick, 2 bars of chugging E5 power chord, or funking things up with an E7#9.. your choice

3 – this is the clever bit: without breaking rhythm, keep tapping your foot and improvise for 2 bars. In this instance you're aiming to develop ideas based off our new backwards blues lick, but you can adapt this exercise to anything.

All of a sudden – brand new lick. Except that you already intuitively understand it, as it's the same scale, and has the same rhythmic properties, so it will very quickly start working it's way into your vocabulary. Try it with every lick you can, you will be amazed by the results, and all of a sudden you'll feel yourself improving again.

Till next time, happy jamming and nuf evah!


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